Archive for the ‘E&L Transport’ tag

Last year, when we went through the photos of the Virtual Motor City Project, we came across an interesting photo of an unidentified cab-over engine truck hauling bomber parts through downtown Detroit during World War II.

We were able to find out a little more about the truck through Crismon and through James Wagner’s “Ford Trucks Since 1905,” but we couldn’t get a clear answer as to who actually built the trucks. Crismon maintained Thorco (a brand of the Thornton Axle Company) built them, while Wagner posited that it was E&L Transport of Dearborn, Michigan.

What makes the trucks so compelling is that whoever built them used two Ford flathead V-8s, mounted side-by-side on a removable tray, complete with their cooling, electrical and exhaust systems. The trucks needed both engines to haul their accompanying 60-foot-long supertrailers, chock full of parts for the B-24 bomber.